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I cannot add my Stumble Upon Fans as friends

pearl 25

Following are some of the people who have befriended me on Stumble Upon but I cannot add them because I have reached my friend quota of 200 Max!

I’d like to return the favor even though there are a lot of articles written about befriending only those stumblers you share common interests with! I somehow do not feel comfortable with that philosophy, and I’ll explain below why!

SUfans1

SUfans2

There are a couple of reasons why I would like to befriend ALL of the people who added me as their friend

1) The idea behind Stumble Upon is to find new and interesting websites and with over 3 million members now using SU, everyone is bound to have some interesting stumbles collected and for me to dismiss someone just because their stumbles are not about blogging does not make sense to me!

2) I have added a lot of people as my friends but not all have reciprocated it by adding me as their friend and however small an issue this is, it bothers me. So, I can understand how someone might feel if I do not reciprocate. Its like subscribing to someone’s RSS feed or adding someone as your favorite on Technorati or Bloglines. Isn’t that the idea behind technorati exchanges and and Bloglines trains? So, what is so different on SU?

But more importantly

3) Stumble Upon is much more enjoyable than any of the social networking sites I have participated in so far. Seriously, I have had the chance to talk with or had some interaction with so many established and well known bloggers, non bloggers as well as top stumblers, that have nothing to do with what I blog about and who I would never have met otherwise, that it would be foolish to now want to limit my ‘friendships’ in some narrow niche!

You can benefit the most from any networking site only when you have first gotten to know people, without thinking of using that relationship for some benefit! such as traffic, or exchanging stumbles etc. So, I am not limiting my Stumble Upon friendships to blogging!

Hence I feel I should be able to add any number of people I want, to my friend list. Since that is not possible at the moment, and until SU lifts the 200 max friend limit, I have been thinking of two possible ways to make room in my friend list:

a) remove those people from my friend list who have not been active for weeks

b) remove myself from those people’s fan list, who I added as my friends but they have a) not added me and b) have not been active in a few weeks

What would you do in this situation?

And if you would like to add me as your friend on Stumble Upon, please don’t hesitate to do so.

Oh, I don’t think there is a soul out there who doesn’t know all the ins and outs of stumble upon, but if you are one of them, here is some good reading material:

A comprehensive guide to Stumbleupon – Dosh Dosh
Increasing your StumbleUpon audience – LinkBuildingBlog
Using StumbleUpon to connect with people in your niche – Caroline Middlebrook
Stumbleupon, you’ve stumbled into my heart – SEOMoz
How to draw Stumbleupon user to your blog – Problogger
The power of the Stumble – Dana Walert

Technorati Tags: Social Media, StumbleUpon

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25 comments
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I’ve been concerned about this issue also. I’m not there yet but I’m moving toward the 200 limit.

There are some users who have added me as a friend that I have ignored for a few reasons:

1) They have been a member for 3 month and only stumbled 6 pages.
2) Their profile is listed as R rated.
3) They just seem really creepy and have only friended a bunch of young women.

I know I only have 200 friends available, I’m not going to spend one on one of these.

I’ve got people I know that haven’t friended me back yet and it does seem a little weird. I want to know why but feel funny asking. Especially since a couple of them ask me to friend them.

I think if I were in your situation I would go back through my friend list and cull the ones who have dropped out or maybe stumble things you don’t care about. I’d also drop anyone who ignored things you refered to them.

Just my opinion. Have a great day :)

Simonne

I had the same problem, but I dropped almost everybody who did not reciprocate, then I dropped people who befriended me for the purpose of sexi talks and stuff like that, then I dropped my brother. Now, this is it, I just let it be and hope everybody would understand why I cannot respond by befriending them back.

pearl

yeah thats weird when someone asks you to friend them but then do not add you as their friend… thats kind of pathetic, if you think of it :D “make me your friend, make me your friend” I consider it the same as when someone asks you to subscribe to their RSS feed, you do that but they never subscribe to yours!

I have those scenarios too where the person has a few stumbles and they friended me…. I thought about it for sometime, its the same as on Digg, someone would join it and the same day add you to their friend list and in the same afternoon you receive five shouts from them! at least on SU, I didn’t see that problem…

thanks for stumbling and commenting ad tracker :)

teeni

Sometime I am going to learn more about StumbleUpon. Right now I’m just trying to remember to stumble sites I like. Posts like these that you do help me to remember to go back and learn more.

Etienne Teo

I have hit a max of 200 then back to 60 mutual friends, then back to 200 then back to 100 friends. Only those who are willing to add me and let me add them with same interest then will i add them, i am starting to remove another set of friends again, i hate to do that, but if they are not committed in this social game, i cant help it.

pearl

SU toolbar is quite helpful teeni… the more you use it, better you get at it..good luck and do check out the links on SU posts at the bottom of this post… they will be helpful

pearl

hi Etienne.. I hate to have to do that, so I will be very strict as to who I remove… as I said, I wont remove anyone if they have been active and have *something* of my interest!

thanks for stopping to comment :) hope to see you around here more often..

pelf

Well, we do have different concepts about this thing called “fans.”

If I add you as a friend, it means that I am your fan. I like your stumbles. And I’d like to keep myself updated on the things that you find interesting. So if someone adds me as a friend, it means that s/he is my fan, and s/he likes my stumbles.

But I only add as “friend” someone whose stumbles I like, not necessarily someone who added me as a friend.

So I think it is perfectly OK to not add any of your fans as friends. After all, we DO have a limit of only 200 friends! If there isn’t a limit, we can add however many friends we like :)

(ARGH. Am I confusing you?)

pearl

No you are not confusing at all Pelf, as a matter of fact, while i was writing that post i was thinking about the same concept.. we don’t have to be fans of anyone who likes our stumbles! agreed! I consider this a courtesy practice since all of us are there to create relationships, find new and interesting material, so adding someone or not shouldn’t be such a big deal! SU is a very successful networking concept and they do not have a limit on the number of stumbles per day or on any one particular type of stumbles you can have or on anything else! So the point of the post was why the heck they have to put a limit on the number of friends you can have? why? whats the reasoning behind it? is what I would like to understand! thats all..

thanks for raising such a good point though … as it was in my mind all this while but didnt write about it… :)

laketrees

I don’t use SU …because the toolbar caused problems with my computer….
I’ve just cleaned out my RSS feeds because I was subscribing to some blogs both by RSS and email…..
I use feedburner exclusively now…which makes life a lot easier
I am rather fed up with Digg….as I get daily shouts for diggs…from people I don’t know….and I doubt whether any of them would reciprocate….it seems that art and artists are at the bottom of the list when it comes to popularity and “front pages” :D
anyway Pearl …now that I’ve had my whinge……I’ll pop back to my humble abode :)